Welcome to Professional and Technical Services (PTS) – experts in chemical disinfection for infection prevention. Our goal is to educate and provide you the latest resources related to cleaning and disinfection of environmental surfaces, medical devices and hands. As specialists in disinfectant chemistries, microbiology, environmental cleaning and disinfection, facility assessments and policy and procedure creation we are dedicated to helping any person or facility who uses chemical disinfectants.

In recent years, we have put a great focus on the contact
time or dwell time of a disinfectant product.
I could go on ad nauseam about contact time citing numerous examples of
why rapid contact times are important, but I think Drs. Rutala and Weber summed
it up nicely in their “Selection
of an Ideal Disinfectant” article with their statement "fast kill times are important because they give you confidence
that you are killing the prevalent and most common healthcare-associated
pathogens before the disinfectant solution can dry".If you want to read more on this
topic, our “Dirty
to Disinfected in 60 Seconds Flat!” will give you more background. To see the validated results on this topic, a
study looking at the efficacy of Improved Hydrogen Peroxide (IHP) products
versus a Quaternary Ammonium Compound (QUATs) showing that IHP products kill
more in a shorter period of time – something that is definitely relevant for
any facility needing to kill germs!

Why has this become relevant? As we see with many auditors during their observations
of current wipe disinfection practices in busy healthcare facilities, surfaces
tend to be wiped once and then left to air dry. We talked about this in detail
in our “Premature
Evaporation – Is your disinfectant fulfilling your every desire?” blog so I
won’t repeat again. But if I can direct
you to a
study that tested dry times against
label contact times,
only one disinfectant technology achieved the requisite wet time using this
approach. In all other cases, the disinfectant dissipated or evaporated short
of the contact time indicated on the label, requiring re-application (in some
cases multiple re-applications) in order to achieve compliance. If your wipe disinfection practice does not
include multiple applications to achieve the requisite wet times, you may be
leaving your healthcare facility open to HAIs.